The companies told Business Report this week that their multi-modal biometric verification engine system prevents fraud and ensures that the right recipients receive their cards.

The Magix Africa consortium won a SAPO procurement bid in March this year to provide a multi-modal biometric verification engine.

The system is able to securely manage and biometrically verify grant recipients data to prevent fraud and ensure that the right recipients receive their grants and cards.

The system underwent a pilot phase earlier this month across 12 sites and is now live.

SAPO and SASSA will use the system to identify grant recipients data by just using their fingerprints.

What this system also allows is for SAPO and SASSA to verify recipients according to other biometric technology such as palm print and facial recognition.

“Magix Africa’s technology partner, Fides Cloud Technologies, has developed its own proprietary software whereby all information related to the SASSA beneficiary is stored in a POPI-compliant, secure TrustedVault. Fides is storing both a photo of the SASSA grant holder as well as a copy of their grant letter alongside their fingerprint”, said the Managing Director of Magix Africa, Kevin Wotshela.

“This allows SAPO to be alerted if a fraudster has attempted to verify themselves against an ID number and if this fingerprint has already been enrolled. Fides is then able to identify which ID number that fingerprint is linked to and able to then eradicate the fraud in real-time”, said Wotshela.